Arab Liberalism with Chinese Characteristics: Developmental Legitimacy and the Limits of Regime Theory in the Arab World

Abstract

How have Arab political-developmental paradigms historically structured state legitimacy, and why do dominant regime theories fail to account for development-centered authority? This article argues that conventional frameworks, transition theory, hybrid regime typologies, rentier-state models, and authoritarian resilience, under-theorize development as a constitutive moral principle. By periodizing modern Arab political history into three paradigms, colonial/postcolonial administrative modernity, Arab nationalist–socialist developmentalism, and post–Cold War liberal reform, it reveals recurring tensions between sovereignty, modernization, centralized authority, and social legitimacy. The article introduces Arab Liberalism with Chinese Characteristics (ALCC), supported by the concepts of commodeterian democracy and the moral economy of development, to show how development mediates political inclusion and justifies centralized rule. In doing so, ALCC extends regime theory beyond institutional reductionism, offering a legitimacy-centered framework for understanding contemporary hybrid formations in the Arab world.